The Edison phonograph monthly (Jan-Dec 1909)

10 Edison Phonograph Monthly, March, 1909 [Reprinted from the Quoin Club Key, the official publication of the Quoin Club, composed of thirty of the leading magazines and national weeklies.] The Phonograph of To-day The Phonograph of yesterday was first one of the most famous and astonishing of American inventions. After that it became a mechanism for recording business correspondence — wonderful in its efficiency and economy for that purpose, yet meaning nothing whatever to the public at large in recreation and culture. The Phonograph of to-day is another instrument altogether. If you are familiar only with the Phonograph of yesterday you owe it as a duty to yourself and family to become acquainted with the Phonograph of here and novo. What this newer instrument is you can learn right in your own community, and it is what it is largely through the magazines. Magazine advertising has put the talking machine into every nook and corner of the nation — of the world. Demand created by magazine advertising has enabled the various manufacturers to undertake research, find new substances, develop more delicate mechanism, and, above all things, safely invest the large capital needed in the making of fine Records for the instrument. In your own home to-day, no matter where you live, the world's great opera singers will sing their greatest parts for you, your family, your friends, at a first cost far less than would be paid for a few performances of opera in New York, even if you could go there. You can hear these singers again and again at your own convenience. Your talking machine will bring you songs of singers yet to rise into prominence, and keep the voices of the singers of the present at command years after they themselves have gone into retirement. The capital invested in securing these Records for you would subsidize half the state opera in Europe. Yet they are yours at the cost of street music if you appreciate them, along with instrumental music of highest quality. For the magazines have provided for the new Phonograph a vast national audience of interested patrons, making the investment possible. That is why an authority stated, just the other day, that "the magazines have really made the Phonograph, and it is not possible to imagine the present instrument without them." In 1900 our Phonograph industry was grouped with electrical supplies by the census-taker — not big enough then to be classed separately. Five years later it had to be classed alone, and to-day few of our industries are growing faster. Only a few dealers sold the Phonograph ten years ago, while to-day there are seventeen thousand dealers in the United States taking care of local demand for the Phonograph. Moreover, each sale of an instrument means not merely a sale, but a permanent future connection in supplying Records. When a dealer sells a Phonograph he has made, not merely a customer, but a client. Lauder Visits Edison Harry Lauder, the Scotch vaudeville artist, who has made fourteen Records for the Edison catalogue, was a visitor at the Orange factory on February 6. He spent some time with Mr. Edison and met several officials of the Edison companies. Closed for Inventory The fiscal year of the Edison companies ended on February 28th, and the factories at Orange, N. J., were closed from February 26th to March 2d, to take inventory. A New One L. W. Broyles, an Edison Dealer at San Marcial, N. M., has hit upon a novel and interesting plan for selling Records, which, he says, lands him a great many machine sales as well. There are a great many people who do not own Phonographs, but who come into the store often and ask to hear their favorite Records. Mr. Broyles' plan is' to sell them the Records at the regular price and charge for playing them. He keeps different customers' Records in separate trays and has tags on which he marks their names and the date on which the rental runs out. He charges by the month for playing the Records — 60 cents for three; 75 cents for six, and so on. The Record belongs to the customer and can be taken away if he wishes. At the same time the Dealer has the use of them for demonstrating to others and can even sell any he wishes, replacing them later. Mr. Broyles says that he has a number of renting customers and that they are mostly unmarried men, who board, or who do not have the money to buy a Phonograph at the time. They get half a dozen or more Records almost before they know it, however, and when a customer begins to buy Records by this plan, it is a moral certainty he will own a Phonograph before very long.